Stuff We Liked: Stock Picks, Lookalike Cars and ‘Star Wars’ Clues

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Bloomberg made the point with a stock market game that it is very hard to beat the market picking an individual stock. The interactive chart reduces stock picking to a game of chance by throwing up a series of individual stock charts, moving in time, and asking you to choose when to buy and when to sell. Only at the conclusion do you learn the name of the company.

CNBC produced a strong piece on how the gender pay gap has another effect later on — a retirement pay gap, says Claire Cain Miller, which is even worse because women tend to live longer than men.

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Seemingly an army of zombie cars. Hondas ready for export on the docks at a port in Japan.CreditEverett Kennedy Brown/European Pressphoto Agency

From BloombergView, the opinion arm of Bloomberg, comes an article by Peter Orszag, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Obama. He argues that some amount of income inequality is a result of the company you are working for. Pick a winner and you are set. Stay in a troubled company and your income lags.

This graphic caught the eye of David Leonhardt after it was tweeted by Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist. It shows how crossover S.U.V.s all look alike. The story explains why this is happening. One could argue it is true of sedans as well. It reminded some people of the great Fortune magazine cover in 1983 of the look-alike General Motors cars.

Another famed venture capitalist, Mike Moritz, expressed his view of the so-called unicorns, tech start-ups with billion-dollar valuations that some people see as a sign of a tech bubble.